Ayr Rotary Water Wheel
Report by Neil Beattie
In 1986, at the Glasgow Garden Festival, our Rotary District 1230 stand featured a splendid water wheel. Two years later, when planning the Rotary Club of Ayr 60th Birthday celebrations, I thought that it would be a good idea to use the water wheel again. To my dismay, I found that it had been lent to Newcastle for their Garden Festival and then lost, possibly scrapped – a tragedy!
Then started a twenty year quest for the Rotary Club of Ayr to get its own wheel, so we could use it for publicity and to help raise money for charity. The hope was that it could be built as part of an apprenticeship training programme or such like. Multiple possibilities were explored and came to nothing until one of our members suggested that we approach Ayr College. Len Houston had now joined our Club and joined me in trying to move the project forward. After several meetings over quite a long time, a design was drawn up based on the Rotary Wheel. Eventually the marvel that is our wheel was constructed. It was a huge team effort on the College’s part, involving staff and students in Technical Drawing, Engineering, Joinery and Painting and the finished product is a testimonial to their skills.
The wheel is about two metres in diameter, made of marine ply on a double bearing supported on an A-frame over a water trough. Propulsion is by water pumped from the trough to the top of the wheel. This pump is currently mains powered but we are planning to convert it to solar power as soon as feasible. For storage and transport the wheel ingeniously splits horizontally. A plaque crediting the staff and students of Ayr College for the design and construction of the water wheel was reverse etched by Fluxworx of Glasgow and donated by one of our members.
On 23rd February 2010, World Rotary Day, the water wheel was handed over by the principal of Ayr College, Diane Rawlinson, to our President, Geoff Barber.
It made its first public appearance was at Ayr Flower Show 2010, where it proved a big hit. It will be used in years to come to help publicise our Club and aid in fund-raising.
The wheel is cared for, on behalf of the Club, by Neil Beattie and Len Houston, to whom all enquiries about the wheel should be made in the first instance through the Contacts Page.